


Carl Said It

by DetroitBabe



Category: The Secret History of Twin Peaks, Twin Peaks
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-26 12:58:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10787199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DetroitBabe/pseuds/DetroitBabe
Summary: "[...]They will never recall the image of the sky at this moment, or of the doorway; they will only have the afterimages of the sensations burned into their minds."Exploration of Carl and Margaret's shared childhood experience as described in TSHoTP, how it shaped their lives and how have their lives paralleled or intertwined.Written for the WONDERFULXSTRANGE fanworks exchange.





	Carl Said It

**Author's Note:**

> As I said, this is a gift, for tumblr user haroldwrens - so if it's you and you're seeing this before the posting date, you should technically wait (;

Robert Jacoby had a daily ritual. Every day at twelve o’clock sharp, rain or shine, he would get up from his desk and take an hour long walk along a woodland trail, which he finished off with a lunch (usually steak and eggs) and a cup of white coffee at the Double R Diner; only then, after such a break, he would return to work for the rest of the afternoon. As it happened, his lunch would occasionally coincide with Carl’s, whenever Carl was in town.

Carl was not the type to chat with other customers or the waitresses at the counter, small talk just wasn’t his thing. He was, however, the type to drop an enigmatic, surreal non-sequitur, muttered in his hoarse voice into the bottom of his cup just before he got up and left. The waitresses joked that they would prefer a tip, but they’ll take what they can get; and that’s probably how Robert did what he did, too: as a little joke, a wink to the other members of the small community within community that was the Railroad’s staff and clientele.

What did he do with Carl’s pearls of nonsensical wisdom? Why, he printed them, of course. Just like that:

 

CARL SAID IT: _What is, is. What was, was_.

 

People who say it doesn’t matter if you’re a boy or a girl until you’re a teenager clearly don’t remember being seven years old, because when you’re seven, it makes all the difference in the world. The realities of boys and girls are kept separate; and a girl who can catch a fly or climb a tree, a girl with scraped knees poking from underneath her pleated skirt – such a girl lives out her childhood suspended between two worlds. She is not allowed into all the little boys’ games and onto all the little boys’ secrets, but she is allowed to tag along.

The boys looked behind their back all the time, checking on her, expecting her to be tired or squeamish, but she soldiered on through the ravine, just a step behind them. They were all a little out of breath, dizzy with the exhilarating run down the woodland path, and a little scared when the setting sun threw long and dark shadows under their feet, but none of them would ever admit it. It was September, that time of the year when summer still lingers on, when school has barely started and every afternoon children go out to play among the trees, trying to catch the last of the warm yellow light, before the birds fly away and the chill evening falls like a reminder of the coming dreary days between the holidays and Christmas. The teachers took them for a nature walk, knowing they won’t sit quietly in a classroom, that they will look longingly out the windows, chatter between themselves and let their minds wander.

The three children couldn’t tell at which point they noticed that they have lost their way; they could have sworn they knew this place like the back of their hand, and yet, somewhere in the carelessness of skipping down the loggers’ tracks, laughing and chattering and throwing pinecones at each other and playing hide-and-seek in the shrubs, they must have taken a wrong turn, and found themselves on unfamiliar ground. Not a moment ago, as it seemed, they could still see the backs of their classmates and Mrs. Hawthorne, even as they were falling behind the group; now, suddenly aware of being alone, they have fallen silent, and they realised they couldn’t hear the others’ voices either.

“Where are the others?” asked the girl quietly. “Are we lost?”

“We can… camp here through the night,” one of the boys reassured her with the confidence of a senior scoutmaster, which he wasn’t. “Make a fire and…”

“Don’t be stupid, Al,” the other boy cut in. “We just wandered off a bit, we can’t be that far away, we just have to make some noise and they’ll find us.” With that, he started yelling at the top of his lungs.

“Heeeey!!! We’re here!”

“They’ll be so mad at us,” Al groaned.

“We can’t hear them,” the girl muttered, a hint of fear creeping into her voice. “How far away are they?”

“What’re you mumbling there, Maggie?” the other boy asked lightly, his spirits lifted with his trust in his own plan, and he called out again. There came no reply, save for a distant hooting of owls which sent a shudder down their spines, and Al remarked it was weird, because owls are supposed to be nocturnal, and it was still day, and then things got a bit strange.

Later, they won’t remember much. They will have vaguely remembered trudging through the woods, darker and darker around them (is the forest so dense, or is it dusk yet?) and the relief when the morning light shone through the trees, and they finally found their way back. They won’t have remembered that other light before it, which they first took for a clearing, but then it grew stronger, blinding, beckoning and terrifying at the same time. They will never recall the image of the sky at this moment, or of the doorway; they will only have the afterimages of the sensations burned into their minds.

That inability to remember is what will always bug Carl the most; the taunting awareness that he has experienced something profoundly bizarre, something life-changing, and yet he doesn’t know what it is. But whatever it was, it laid at the foundation of his cultivated interest in the strange and unexplained. He was a spunky, resolute boy who grew up to be a hardy, no-nonsense young man, and this was how he dealt with things. Analyse and overcome. Not like the other two – but that’s another story, isn’t it?

 

CARL SAID IT: _It’s all connected_.

 

Was it just life’s cruel irony, or some unknowable destiny, Carl couldn’t decide, but the way his rationality has been plunged spiralling into the bizarre events of his life had a bearing of a cosmic joke that even he, despite being at the end of it, sometimes laughed at.

At first glance, his brief ordeal in the woods seemed to affect him less than the other two children; it came as no surprise to anyone – after all, he was always a plucky boy, thick skin and thick skull, they’d say. His most vivid memory was the light of dawn, coming as a shock, as if he did not register the passage of time at all, as if indeed nothing has happened between getting lost and found. And yet there was this nagging in his mind, this tender area that he couldn’t stop prodding at, the same way you keep touching an aching bruise, not even sure why you’re doing it or why is the pain of it comforting.

Also, he has found himself afraid of owls.

Between the three of them – himself, Maggie and Alan – they instinctively avoided discussing what has happened, so it must have been someone else, or perhaps a book or a comic he read, that has prompted his, as he called it with all the gravity of a little boy, investigation. He has become a collector of stories – myths, legends and conspiracy theories. It was the same, analytical part of his brain that tried to understand and at the same time mocked his efforts. He would catch himself touching the unnaturally regular scar on the back of his knee, again and again, more often than he’d like to admit. But still for some time, outside of his head, life has been mundane.

And then they came, whoever they were, spirits of old tales or beings from the stars; they came to him, and he knew that they and the phantoms haunting his childhood were kin.

And then his wife has died.

 

* * *

 

Margaret loved the woods, and maybe, as she sometimes liked to think, the woods loved her, too, and have claimed her soul forever. A fanciful idea, perhaps, but aren’t they alive? Doesn’t the life of the trees and grass and deer and ghosts run parallel with the life of the town? Just like the men, women and children, don’t they have desires and plans of their own?

Ever since that fateful night, Maggie doubted that Al has ever set foot in those woods again, ventured any deeper than the meadows on the outskirts; it was hard to tell who felt more anxious, his parents or the boy himself, but in any case, he kept his distance. But even Carl, Carl the plucky local firebrand little devil, has withdrawn into himself. Neither him not Maggie felt like talking about what happened – not initially – and so whenever she went into the woods to ponder, not to play, she did so alone; those paths they walked separately.

She was careful to always come back early, though, before the owls awake.

Maybe again it was some inherent or ingrained difference between boys and girls, but where Carl saw some hidden malice, a danger to recognize and guard himself against, she saw the intertwined natural and supernatural order of things, neither entirely evil nor benign, but always wondrous. He has joined the Coast Guard, she became a servicewoman of a different kind; although the Forest Service turned down her application, she still did everything he could to protect and cherish those woods that became a second home to her. She would sometimes catch herself touching the unnaturally regular scar on the back of her knee, but surprisingly often she wouldn’t even think about it – and when she did, it was without fear, for she did not yet truly understand.

And then her newlywed husband has died.

And then they came, whoever they were, spirits of old tales or beings from the stars; they came to her, and she knew that they and the ghosts guiding her youth were kin.

 

CARL SAID IT: _All there is is now_.

 

It must have been the early eighties when they met again, when Carl has returned from Alaska, and she – well, she has never left. But it was her who came to his trailer at the Fat Trout. There was a “do not disturb” sign hanging on his door, but if she noticed it, she ignored it and knocked.

He looked down at her from the doorstep, grumbling under his breath, but his frowned expression softened when she looked up, back at him.

“Maggie?” It was more an exclamation of surprise than a question; he has recognized her straight away, alright. Some faces you don’t forget, no matter what changes and how much time passes. To say she was a high school crush of his would be a lie, or a misunderstanding; she was a remarkable girl, he wouldn’t deny that, but his quiet interest in her sprung form something else entirely, and he remembered all too well what it was when he saw her. There was a rough-cut piece of wood cradled in her arms, and she stroked and patted it as she said quietly:

“We knew that an old friend will return. Lives once entangled don’t stay apart.”

“Uh… hello?” he hesitated. “Come in,” he added, shaking his head as if in attempt to shake off the confusion of her unexpected visit and unorthodox greeting, and gestured at her to follow him into the trailer. She wrinkled her nose at the pervasive smell of cigarettes hanging in the slightly stale air. “Hey, let me make you some coffee,” he offered, and put the old percolator on the stove.

She tried his strong bitter brew and grimaced, but took another sip; say what you want, but the Double R has developed an addiction to good black coffee in all residents of the Twin Peaks area.

As we have already established, Carl was no great conversationalist, but since (despite being the one who paid the visit) Margaret sat silently at the small oilcloth-covered table, it was up to him to talk, apparently.

“Got married, then?” he asked, a tad awkwardly, noticing the wedding ring on her finger. She still said nothing, but there was an unmistakable sadness in her eyes that he knew, he has seen it in the mirror enough times, and he did not press on.

“…Right,” he muttered.

“Do you believe in life from… other places?” she asked, looking him straight in the eye, her voice level and measured, but betraying a hint of interest. He frowned at first, once again caught by surprise, but then followed her gaze to the crumpled sci-fi paperback left on the table. He shrugged, but after a brief pause, as if on a second thought, he sat down facing her.

“Do you?” he asked.

What was she supposed to say? Perhaps the same things she had only days earlier said to the Palmers’ girl, she thought, except… She still carried the years-old conviction that Carl’s path was his own, and hers was separate, even if they sometimes crossed.

“See,” he continued, “I know we’ve never talked about this, but… what do you reckon happened to us, Maggie? Back when we were kids? Maybe that’s it, you know. Aliens or whatnot. I’ve had that thought before, but now… Now I see these lights over Blue Pine, and I can’t help but wonder, what is going on there? I’m sorry, Maggie, but please, tell me what you think. I gotta talk about it with someone who won’t say I’m crackpot.”

Margaret looked at him sympathetically, and then she decided to tell him some of the things she knew.

He’d sometimes bump into her after that, on the streets or in the diner, or he would stop by her cabin when he was in town. The people picked up on that, of course; it’s always said that there are no secrets kept in a small town, though we both know that’s not entirely true, especially in a town like Twin Peaks, and Carl and Margaret knew it too. The gossipers said they matched each other, both a bit crazy, and perhaps they should marry; there was no truth to neither of those claims, though.

She visited him at Deer Meadow once more. Or perhaps he wasn’t the purpose of her visit, because she went straight up to the Chalfonts’ trailer, and began to fling quite loud, albeit seemingly nonsensical accusations. When Carl walked up to her, and slightly embarrassed put a protective arm around her, she was trembling, and kept repeating:

“ _I see beyond your masks_.”

“Yeah, yeah, come on,” he nodded, gently steering her towards his trailer before too many curious neighbours came out. He never thought of her as demented or mad, like many folks did, except maybe just then, for a moment. He tried talking to her, but she would explain nothing; she drank a cup of his coffee and left.

Next day the Chalfonts disappeared, and then two FBI agents came knocking at his door and asking about a girl who has lived at Fat Trout, and was apparently found killed; and then a few even stranger things happened. Later, he told Margaret all about it, and somehow it came as no surprise to him when she did not seem shocked at all – upset, yes, but she seemed to have been expecting it.

The death of Laura Palmer a year after moved her more, but again, no wonder; this time, the tragedy struck closer to home, both literally and figuratively – Margaret and Laura lived close to each other and knew each other. Still, Carl had an unshakeable feeling that there was more to Margaret’s grief than met his eye. He was quite right in that, almost prophetically; and as the events following Laura’s murder unfolded, the only thing that became clear to everyone was that nothing was going to ever be quite the same. They were right in that, too.

 

* * *

 

Old folks still buy the newspaper, so the Gazette is still in print, even though the younger reporters say they should move to online news only soon. But out here, it’s rarely out with the old, and slowly in with the new, so despite all the changes, some things tend to stay the same; and there is still that small slug printed from time to time on the bottom of page three:

 

CARL SAID IT: _It is happening again_.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry that it's not much, it's less and more rough than I originally intended; I've been really busy lately, but I didn't want to give up, because it was an interesting prompt and I had fun thinking and writing about it (and re-reading TSHoTP as a way of research (; )...  
> It was weird (but in a good way, I think) to write about such, after all, minor characters - it forced and allowed me to take quite a lot of liberty with their personalities and backstories, which was a fun challenge, and I hope I did them justice; especially Margaret, who's so iconic, I bet everyone has their own headcanon or two about her, but maybe I somehow aligned with them.  
> Well, that's it, and I hope you liked it.


End file.
